Djinn and Tonic
by paperology
Summary: I Dream of Jeannie AU; Dean's an astronaut that crash lands on a deserted island & finds a bottle...which he lets Castiel out of. Chaos ensues. Dean/Cas


_I went and watched the pilot episode of _I Dream of Jeannie_ for this – it's been yeaaars since I last watched this on Nick at Nite. Anyways, this is for Kamiluv for being an awesome fellow author & getting my butt into gear._

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><p><em>I'm going to die.<em>

_Hundreds of hours of training, years of brown-nosing to General Singer, all the money I spent on buying his daughter the highest-karat diamond I could find._

_And now I'm going to go down in a fiery blaze in the middle of the Atlantic._

A giant, red warning light goes off in Dean's head, flashing in time with the one on the panel in front of him. He lost contact with Mission Control minutes before, after the main engine failure lights lit up and frantic codes and swears filtered in through the static until they became unintelligible. The panel is alight in all different colors now, and when his eyes blur, Dean can see himself sitting with an eight year-old Sam in front of the Christmas tree, their father whistling _Deck the Halls_ somewhere nearby.

Great, his life is literally flashing before his eyes.

_Okay, I've been trained for this. I'm Captain Dean Winchester, and I've logged hundreds of hours preparing for situations like this. I'll just pry my fingers out from the grooves I've made on the armrests and ready myself for an emergency ejection while I plummet to the earth at 9.8 meters per second. Yeah, my chances of surviving a high-speed ejection are pretty slim, but they'll be slimmer if I sit around and do nothing._

Dean shuts his eyes and inhales the thin, artificial air, dons his helmet, and executes the sequence of buttons and levers he's committed to memory but never thought he'd use.

The last thing he can recall is the digital green number successfully appearing on the screen before him, counting down the number of seconds before the chair he's strapped into shoots out the hatch, spinning like a teacup out into the atmosphere.

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><p>It's really hot now and Dean's whole body feels waterlogged and like he's run face-first into a brick wall.<p>

Dean cracks open his eyes to the bright tropical sun, and lets out a grunt as he turns over in the sand, the salt soaked through the tears in his suit and making his skin feel tight and itchy. It takes him several minutes, but he works the heavy space suit off and stands on the beach in his NASA-blue jumpsuit and boots, scouring the horizon for any sign of the wreckage.

There's nothing but waves, and he has no clue how only he and his pack managed to wash ashore. Dean turns around and sees that the island that's gathered him to its bosom is covered in lush trees and high cliffs. There only appear to be animal inhabitants though, to Dean's dismay. He's got nothing in his pack except some food and water and a fire blanket, nothing that would help him make contact back with Mission Control, but no doubt they're already out looking for him.

He can just sit here…and wait…until someone sees the invisible wreckage that signals where he's plopped down on Earth. So he's kind of screwed, for lack of a better term, but never let it be said that Capt. Dean Winchester is a quitter. There's some driftwood lying around, and the forty-foot 'SOS' he's digging into the sand would be visible by anyone that happens to fly over the island.

Dean reaches the tail end of the last 'S' when he notices a blue bottleneck sticking out of the sand. He grins, thinking maybe he's stumbling upon some kid's message tossed into the sea. Sam did that once, made Dean sign it too before they stuffed it in a bottle and threw it off the pier in Rhode Island. It makes something clench in Dean's gut, thinking about it, and he tries to shake the sense that he might never see his brother again.

The bottle slides out of the sand easily, buried deep as it was. It looks like it's carved from some sort of stone, a deep sapphire color, and it looks ancient with odd engravings all along the edges. Dean doesn't recognize the language, but he rubs a thumb across a line of it to smooth away some of the sand and dirt.

Just as he brings it closer, the bottle starts to hum and quiver in his hands.

_Shit, did I just detonate some caveman's IED?_

A cloud of blue smoke erupts from the head of the bottle.

_Oh no, it's just poison gas. Okay._

Dean finally comes to his senses and drops the bottle, which hits the sand but doesn't stop spewing smoke. He watches it in awe, wondering how the propulsion system fits in such a small vessel.

The cloud around him is thickening, but Dean suddenly makes out the figure of a man standing in the center of it, right where the head of the bottle is pointing. It takes him by surprise, and Dean's entire body tenses up in anticipation of a fight – smoke bombs are used to disorient the target, and this guy's already got the drop on him.

The air suddenly clears. Dean finds himself standing face to face with his assumed adversary, who is carrying no weapons and doesn't appear to be hostile. In fact, he's wearing some sort of ridiculous Aladdin costume, complete with baggy linen pants and a blue vest that bares his tanned chest and arms.

Dean can only stare incredulously, when the man drops abruptly to his knees and speaks in a language Dean doesn't understand, but recognizes as inestimably ancient. He sounds like he hasn't spoken in thousands of years, voice deep and coarse, intense and commanding even without the context of words. And then he's up on his feet again, approaching Dean.

He should probably run. Punch the guy, push him away, anything really, just stop him from getting as close as he is. But the man's eyes hold him in place, and Dean can't honestly feel like doing anything other than looking into the infinite blueness. There's something inhuman in them, beyond natural, and it captivates Dean as much as it unnerves him. It's only when he realizes that the man is close enough to _kiss_, that he blinks and averts his gaze, clearing his throat to hide the blush rapidly coloring his face.

"Hey, man," Dean holds up his hands, enunciating each word. "I don't know where it is that I am, but where I come from, we've got something called personal space. We also don't greet newcomers with smoke bombs."

The man stares blankly at him.

Dean has to shake the gaze off again after a moment. "Look, Ali Baba, I need to call…you know _call_?" he says, miming a receiver with his hand, "I've gotta call my commander back in America and tell him where I am so he can come rescue me from this godforsaken place. No offense."

The man frowns at him. "_Ol monasci oi Castiel_."

"…Yeah, does than mean 'I have a cell phone' in Esperanto or something?"

The man crosses his arms in front of him and tilts his head to one side with a confused look on his face, a curved horn appearing in Dean's outstretched hand.

"_Holy sh_-, _what the hell?_" Dean yelps, throwing it to the ground like it's a viper that's dropped in his hand.

The furrow between the man's eyebrows deepens. "_Gechisge ol ipamis vicinin?_"

"_What the-…how did you-…where am I?..._" Dean blusters in response. It takes him another minute of gaping before it finally dawns on him.

"Oh my god, you're not Aladdin…you're the freakin' genie!" he points and yells.

The genie narrows his eyes at the shouting.

"Oh ho, this is-, I've either gone completely bat-shit crazy in this heat or this is the awesomest thing ever," Dean yells some more. "So I get three wishes, right? Shit, I already used one. Okay, that's fine – I'll just be more careful…uh, Genie_, I wish I had a computer with 4G connection_."

The genie crosses his arms, tilts his head, and an abacus with beads that feel suspiciously like four grams each appears in Dean's hands.

He beats the calculating tool against his head.

"Okay, I get that you've been in the bottle a while, I do…but I really wish we understood each other better, because this thing? It's not gonna help me unless I can add my way off this island."

"I don't believe mathematics alone can accomplish that, Master."

"You're damn right, it won't. I'm gonna have to- _hey!_"

Dean goes back to yelling and gaping. "You speak English! How- oh._ Oh_. Dammit, am I out of wishes?"

"I am here to serve you in whatever way I can, Master." The way he says it sends shivers down Dean's spine.

"Okay, first of all, don't call me that. Second…if I ask you for a chopper, are you going to conjure me a set of Cutco knives?"

The genie frowns (which Dean is starting to recognize as his default wish-granting face), and tilts his head. "Is that what you desire?" he asks, looking up at the loud whirring noise approaching them.

Dean follows his gaze and his ears and sees the US government helicopter in the sky, and lets out a whoop of joy.

"That's it, man! You finally got it right!" he grins, slapping the genie on the shoulder. "I, uh…hey, I don't think I can take you with me. I don't know how I'd explain you, and I don't think my world's such a good place for you. They'd dissect you and parade you around…I can't let you turn into anyone's golden goose, not even mine."

"But you've released me. I belong to you now," the genie says, laying his own hand over the one Dean still has on his shoulder. The sensation runs all the way up Dean's arm and he lets go then, before he can't.

"You've saved me, Kazaam. I'm setting you free now. We're even," Dean grins.

"My name is Castiel."

Dean blinks. "Well, I think introductions are moot point now, but anyways, I'm Dean."

"Dean." Castiel lets slip the first smile since he poofed out of the bottle, and Dean can't help but feel something when he does. Still, he starts walking down the beach towards the chopper.

"Goodbye, Cas. Thanks again."

Castiel watches him leave, before tilting his head and vaporizing once again. The smoke funnels into the bottle, which rolls quietly into the pack Dean's left laying next to his sandy distress signal.

When Dean comes back to retrieve it with Ash and the other members of the rescue team, he doesn't admit to feeling dismayed that Cas is no longer anywhere in sight.

**TBC**

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><p><em>AN: Reviews? =D_**  
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